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Zero Gravity on Earth
Name: Nick
Status: student
Age: 17
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1999
Question:
Is it true that on earth there isn't a room capable of
reproducing a 0-gravity enviroment? If i'm right, it is immpossible to
have one. The only method to simmulate it, is to fly really
fastly towards the ground from a very high altitude? I have money on
this statement, I hope that it is immpossible.
Replies:
Nick -
No only can you not have 0 gravity on the earth, there is no place in the
universe with 0 gravity. following the inverse square law, you will always
have a fraction of what you had before. Yes, Mars is attracting you.
Today we talk about microgravity. We can experience microgravity in earth
orbit, or in fretful (for a short period of time).
I don't know if this earns you any money. Good Luck.
Larry Krengel
You're half right. Zero gravity has never been demonstrated. We know of
nothing that will enable one object with mass to be near another object
with mass and not experience an attraction toward it.
If you don't resist this gravitational attraction, and just free-fall
toward the earth from an altitude, you can sort of simulate an environment
without gravity. If you hold something in your hand and let it go, it
won't drop to your feet. The reason for this is that you are already
dropping just as fast as the object is. Now, in free-fall, you don't
necessarily have to be moving toward the earth, just accelerating toward
it. If, say, someone loads both you and an anvil in a catapult and fires
you both upward, you will both move first upward, then eventually downward.
Throughout the entire trajectory, you and the anvil are in free-fall, and
neither you nor the anvil drops relative to the other. This is how the
weightlessness-simulating "vomit comet" airplane works: it flies in a
curved path upward, then downward so that its acceleration matches that due
to gravity.
I don't know if this means that you lose your bet or not. It depends on
exactly what you've bet on.
Richard Barrans Jr., Ph.D.
Free-fall rides at amusement parks "simulate" a zero-g environment. An
elevator could easily be rigged to give a zero-g experience for a limited
time. Of course it would have to be slowed down in a safe manner so that no
one got hurt.
Dr. Bradburn
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Update: June 2012
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